India-born British author Neel Mukherjee has emerged as the odds-on favourite to win the Booker Prize in London tonight. Mukherjee's 'The Lives Of Others', a sweeping account of life in 1960s Calcutta, is 5/2 favourite to win with bookmakers William Hill, making him the frontrunner for the coveted 50,000 pound prize to be presented by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, at a gala ceremony at London's Guildhall.

London-based Mukherjee has been selected for his second novel published in May this year. The book is based in his birth place of Kolkata and centres around a dysfunctional Ghosh family in the 1960s and the secrets and rivalries within the family against a backdrop of political activism.

Mukerjee, who studied at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, reviews fiction for the 'Times' and the 'Sunday Telegraph' and his first novel, 'A Life Apart' was a joint winner of the Vodafone-Crossword Award in India.